Merzbow – Live at Parramatta Riverside Theatre – May 11, 2012

For me, a Merzbow performance is all about the iconography. All the pointers from the history of rock performance are there, through to more recent electronic developments. So, filing into the Parramatta Riverside Theatre’s largest auditorium (a beautiful room in which to witness any type of performance – and just 10 minutes from home for me, a staunch suburbanist), the subdued lighting reveals an Ampeg stack stage left rear – bass icon, check – a Marshall stack stage right rear – guitar/rock icon, check – and a desk stage front and centre, covered in a small mixing desk, an infinite tangle of spaghetti-leads patching in and out of fx pedals and a now almost ubiquitous glowing white apple symbol on the laptop – electronica icon, check. And there it was, 50 years of music performance iconography sparsely and imposingly inhabiting the large stage.

Merzbow’s music is actually the obvious place that rock’s evolution should take it, if it weren’t for the majority of rock musicians sidetracking themselves into nostalgic cul-de-sacs. Merzbow plays a beautiful game with that – emptying rock’s pomp of all but it’s key signposts, emptying its sound of all but its most cathartic elements, then exaggerating these beyond reason. The sound is enormous, while Merzbow himself remains relatively calm. Time and volume dissolve. I started the performance with my ears protected by the venue supplied earplugs, but soon found myself without anything in them as the noise was not painful. As layers were added, I gradually added cotton wool as required, but it was often difficult to tell just how loud things were. To test it out, at one stage I carefully sang a note out loud, which I slowly built into a full throated yell. I couldn’t hear any of it myself, nor did anyone immediately around me seem to notice my personal addition to the noise. Yet the music never felt painfully overwhelming. And by the end of the set, I had to ask a friend what the time was. I knew I had heard a lot of sound for a long time, but it certainly didn’t feel like a slog through an entire hour, it felt much less than that. And so, with little ceremony, Merzbow pulls the faders down on his mixing desk, then pulls the remaining squall out of his foldbacks, then exits the stage behind his Marshall stack, it’s small glowing red power lights reminding us that none of this would be possible without Jimi Hendrix.

About Author

Adrian Elmer is a visual artist, graphic designer, label owner, musician, footballer, subbuteo nerd and art teacher, who also loves listening to music. He prefers his own biases to be evident in his review writing because, let's face it, he can't really be objective.